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Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology Ralph Maud Potlatch at Gitsegukla

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Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology Ralph Maud Potlatch at Gitsegukla n8 BC STUDIES ... I had been thinking about the book is aimed, will be able to critically glyphs all morning after finally being assess its lack of scholarship. This can ferried across" Too bad he didn't take only lead to entrenching preconceptions the time to speak with the Edgars, who about, and ignorance of, First Nations have intimate knowledge of the area in British Columbia. The sad thing is and the tliiy'aa'a of Clo-oose. that, although this result is no doubt Serious students will find little of the furthest thing from Johnson's value in this book, and it is unlikely intention, it will be the legacy of his that the general public, at whom the book. Transmission Difficulties: Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology Ralph Maud Burnaby: Talonbooks, 2000.174 pp. Illus. $16.95 paper. Potlatch at Gitsegukla: William Beynon's 1Ç45 Field Notebooks Margaret Anderson and Marjorie Halpin, Editors Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000. 283 pp. Illus., maps. $29.95 paper. REGNA DARNELL University of Western Ontario OTH VOLUMES REVIEWED here respects the integrity of Beynon's parti­ explore the present utility and cipant-observation documentation, B quality of Tsimshian archival simultaneously reassessing and con- and published materials. There the re­ textualizing it relative to other extant semblance ends. The scholarly methods work on the Gitksan and closely related and standpoints are diametrically op­ peoples. Beynon was invited to the pot- posed; a rhetoric of continuity and latches primarily in his chiefly capacity, respect for tradition contrasts sharply although he was also an ethnographer with one of revolutionary discontinuity. bringing thirty years experience to Let us examine each product in turn. describing how the feast system The long overdue publication of organizes Gitksan daily lives through William Beynon's four field notebooks a great variety of publicly witnessed from two weeks of potlatch and totem transactions. Beynon's fieldnotes are pole raising at the Gitksan village of followed by a brief history of the Gitsegukla in 1945 reflects over two Gitksan "encounter with the colonial decades of collaboration between the world" (193) by James A. McDonald editors and Tsimshian, Nisga'a, and and Jennifer Joseph - particularly Gitksan peoples. Their commentary poignant given recent denigrations of Book Reviews up Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en land claims anthropologist of the day, reassured based in the feast system. Barbeau that Beynon's independent Introductory material focuses on text collection provided an ideal how central cultural and linguistic method, with "no absolute reason why categories played out in the 1945 every bit of material that one utilizes events. We are told, for example, how in [one's] work should have been cross-cousin marriage consolidates personally obtained" (6). Sapir's and recycles names and crests, how teacher, Franz Boas, applied this ceremonial forms are modified (con­ ethnography-at-a-distance method to sciously or inadvertently), how parti­ Kwak'wala (with George Hunt) and cular name images are dramatized in to Tsimshian (with Henry Tate), as performance, how stagecraft is com­ Sapir did to Nuu'chah'nulth (with patible with genuine religious feeling Alex Thomas). Beynon began as an (as individuals respond to the same interpreter but, increasingly, his work ceremonies at different levels of stood on its own scientific merits, abstraction and engagement), and tempered by his personal engagement how aesthetic criteria are subordinated with the culture he documented - to the proclamation of inherited what Boas valorized as "the native rights. point of view." Anderson and Halpin are adamant After considerable internal con­ that Beynon's ethnographic data must testation, traditional potlatch forms remain paramount. Whatever the flaws were employed. Beynon watched of earlier materials, more recent carefully the young men who had theory-driven works "may become wanted to modernize the ceremonies, dated as academic discourse moves on revealing "the culturation expressions to other questions" (13). Exceptions in the different generations" (69). He include sometime Tsimshianists Franz was fascinated by recent decreases in Boas, Philip Drucker, Viola Garfield, Christian influence, with ceremonies and Wilson Duff, all of whom colla­ matter-of-factly being held on Sundays. borated with Beynon or used his Beynon produced the fullest record we materials extensively. have, both of a particular potlatch and Community permission was ob­ of the processes underlying the form tained to prepare the manuscript; its itself. Its publication is invaluable. draft was returned to contemporary Ralph Maud's self-indulgent dia­ elders for clarification and approval; tribe on Boas's Tsimshian work with and the product is intended for use in Henry Tate contrasts at multiple levels reinvigorating traditional culture after with the meticulous, respectful schol­ a century of intense assimilative arship of Anderson and Halpin. His pressures. Both Beynon's recordings title properly pinpoints the inevit­ and their present publication are ability of "transmission difficulties" attributed to the commitment of the between English and Tsimshian. Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en to their Maud goes on, however, to castigate culture. Boas for being a man of his own time, Beynon (1888-1958), son of a Welsh an ethnographic pioneer, without father and high-ranking Tsimshian whose collaboration with men like mother, began his ethnographic colla­ Beynon, Tate, Hunt, and Thomas, the boration with Marius Barbeau in 1914. BC ethnographic record would be Edward Sapir, Canada's paramount decimated. I20 BC STUDIES Maud's world comes in black and In a particularly muddled passage, white. His heroes (Beynon, Barbeau, Maud "imagines" that Tate infers that Tate, Hill-Tout, Mcllwraith, Duff, Boas "hates Tsimshian culture, really and Halpin) are counterpoised with hates it" because Boas urges him to his villains (Hunt, Lévi-Strauss, and include then scandalous material. especially Boas). The choices are self- Either this "disqualifies Boas as an serving: Maud extols localism in BC anthropologist" (38) or he was "faking anthropology, endorsing only those a like-mindedness in order to get more Ottawa anthropologists outside the out of" Tate (39). Boas was "so ethi­ Boasian tradition, thereby isolating cally mixed up [about 'savage practices' British Columbia from the North versus professional distance] that one American scholarly mainstream. should hesitate to believe any single Maud is not a fieldworking anthro­ thing he said" (39). This overwrought pologist. Without himself attempting hyperbole is compounded by a parody to command the Tsimshian language, of cultural relativism. Maud's version he castigates Boas for errors in his of an anthropologist must admire and attempts to do so. Maud lives in a identify with "ethnic necessities," even house of glass, disrespectful both of "ethnic cleansing": "Northwest Coast the disciplines of ethnography and anthropology is defined by head­ linguistics and of Native peoples them­ hunting warfare, the cheating gluttony selves. His comments about Northwest of the trickster, and the lineage Coast peoples are frequently insensitive boasting in the interminable garage at best: "Crest stories are boring to sales called potlatches. If you cannot anyone not party to the one-upmanship get into this stuff, then quit" (39). For of the potlatch game" (91). most practitioners, anthropology is Maud's analysis properly highlights not defined by wallowing in the the significant limitations of Boas's negative, formulated in terms external Tsimshian work, particularly his to the culture in question. awareness that Tate recorded stories Maud is kinder to Tate than to in English and only later translated Boas. Tate is a better English stylist, them into Tsimshian. Maud equates while Boas's native German, "officious authenticity with a "primary text" in superiority" (23), and "misplaced "some old story-teller's Tsimshian meticulousness" (31) obscure textual words" (17). He fails to acknowledge vitality. Maud fails to acknowledge the salvage project in which Boas be­ that the translations were intended lieved himself to be engaged: any record not as literature but as an elucidation was better than none. Maud rails about of Tsimshian grammar. Maud wishes Boas's penchant for assuming that any Boas had studied Tate's transition knowledgeable Native person repre­ between oral and written cultures; sented "the culture" rather than fore­ however, such a project was incon­ grounding the creativity of individual ceivable at the turn of the century. storytellers. Boas did, indeed, pub­ Maud's consideration of how to lished Tate's texts quite uncritically. retrieve the original texts from the Ignoring the publishing standards and canons of an earlier scholarship is audience expectations of the time, much more productive. Maud concludes that Boas was a Tate is praised for doing what Boas prude because he left so-called obscene wanted, and Boas is denigrated for re­ passages in untranslated Tsimshian. questing specific information, bizarrely Book Reviews 121 styled as "something of a no-no in the stratum" from which the stories profession" (72). Tate was not culpable emerge. Had Boas indulged in such for what would now be considered New Age pseudohistory, his texts plagiarism (i.e., borrowing from would scarcely have come down to us models that appeared in previous as exemplary! Boasian texts) because authorship was Maud's venom apparently arises elusive in Northwest
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